Hope & Sesame Named The Best Bar in Asia 2026

Hope & Sesame, a cocktail bar in Guangzhou, was named The Best Bar in Asia at the Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2026 awards, held on 28 July 2026 at Wynn Palace in Macau. It is the first bar in mainland China to lead the ranking, and the award came in the year of its tenth anniversary.

The bar opened in 2016 behind an unmarked door at the back of a small café in Dongshankou, a district of old brick villas in Guangzhou, and is run by a team of bartenders from the city. Its reputation rests on drinks that apply laboratory technique, including distillation, clarification and fermentation, to Cantonese flavours and ingredients, from aged tangerine peel and oolong tea to local soups and desserts reinterpreted as cocktails. The group has since opened further bars in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Zest, in Seoul, was No.2. Bar Leone in Hong Kong, which had led the Asian list for the previous two years and was named the best bar in the world in 2025, was No.3. Dry Wave Cocktail Studio in Bangkok was No.4, and MO Bar at Mandarin Oriental, Shenzhen No.5, which put two bars from the Pearl River Delta’s mainland cities in the first five.

Bangkok and Hong Kong each had seven bars on the list, Singapore four and Tokyo three. Guangzhou, Seoul, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Taipei had two each. The turnover was unusually high, with 18 new entries.

Several of the individual awards went to Hong Kong. Coa, Jay Khan’s agave bar and a former No.1, received the Legend of the List Award. Mius won the award for best bar design, and its founder, Shelley Tai, was voted Bartenders’ Bartender by her peers. Indra Kantono, co-founder of the Jigger & Pony group in Singapore, received the Industry Icon Award, and Smoke & Bitters, on the south coast of Sri Lanka, the Art of Hospitality Award.

For travellers, the result is a reason to look again at Guangzhou, a city usually visited for its food, and now less than an hour from Hong Kong by high-speed train.